• PC World
• » Software
• » Browsers & Add-Ons

Consumers spent $380 million online Monday, up 104 percent from the same day last year, according to analyst firm comScore Networks.

And on "Black Friday," the day after Thanksgiving, consumers spent $196 million, up 30 percent from last year, according to Reston, Virginia-based comScore. (The two days are often referred to as "Black" Friday and Monday because if sales are strong on those days, retailers hope to wind up in the black for the year.)

For all of last week, non-travel retail sales online reached $912 million, according to a statement from comScore.

High-Speed Shopping

ComScore said Monday's surge in sales could be attributed to the fact that many consumers did their online shopping when they returned to work after the Thanksgiving holiday because they had access to high-speed Internet connections.

Non-travel online sales rose as well, totaling 155 million on Friday, up 40 percent from 2001, and $232 million on Monday--up 49 percent from last year. And travel sales grew too, totaling $45 million on Friday and $148 million on Monday, up 7 percent and 72 percent from last year, respectively.

ComScore spokesperson Max Kalehoff said 30 percent more people are shopping online this year, in part because they believe they can get better deals online than in traditional brick-and-mortar stores. In addition, he said, late Internet adopters are now shopping online because they feel more comfortable doing so.

According to the Nielsen/NetRatings 2002 Holiday eCommerce Index, 18 percent more consumers shopped online on Black Friday compared with the rest of the week, and 36 percent more shoppers flocked to the Internet than did the previous Friday.

New York-based Nielsen/NetRatings said that consumer electronic sites more than doubled their traffic on the day after Thanksgiving, attracting 111 percent more visitors than last year, while book, music, and video sites attracted 76 percent more shoppers this year.

Shorter Shopping Season

"It's really been a merry start to the [online] holiday shopping season," said Helen Malani, a spokesperson for BizRate.com, a Los Angeles-based comparison-shopping site that tracks online commerce.

Malani said online sales for Thanksgiving weekend--Friday, Saturday, and Sunday--hit $679 million, up 55 percent from last year.

She said the double-digit growth could be attributed to the fact that this year Thanksgiving fell six days later than it did last year, resulting in fewer shopping days for consumers to visit local malls and stores.

"Online shopping saw an extra boost by having a December day in the Thanksgiving weekend this year, because December 1 really marks the beginning of the holiday shopping season for consumers," she said. "Consumers spent $235.7 million online on Sunday, beating the Black Friday figure of $234.2 million."

Malani said that 49 percent of all people who shopped online were likely influenced by the many free shipping deals available.

"A lot of consumers went to the malls on Friday, got exhausted and then turned to the Web to look for better deals," she said.

Despite the surge in online traffic this weekend, a spokesperson for San Mateo, California-based Keynote Systems, which monitors the performance of 40 major consumer Web sites, said the sites were all able to handle increased traffic to their home pages.

• See more like this:
• holiday,
• shopping,
• online,
• Web,
• Internet,
• e-shopping,
• retail,
• comScore Networks,
• Nielsen/NetRatings 2002